Many collaborate as overdoses rise

Communities craft individual plans to address addiction epidemic

By Ethan Hartley
Posted 6/21/18

By ETHAN HARTLEY Over 200 people filled the Grand Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza in Warwick to continue the fight against overdoses in Rhode Island, as Governor Gina Raimondo and various state departments gathered to discuss the topic with local law

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Communities craft individual plans to address addiction epidemic

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Over 200 people filled the Grand Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza in Warwick to continue the fight against overdoses in Rhode Island, as Governor Gina Raimondo and various state departments gathered to discuss the topic with local law enforcement officials, emergency rescue personnel and drug treatment facilities from across the state on Tuesday afternoon.

“We are doing everything we know how to do, in concert with the community and all of you, to make sure we save lives,” Raimondo said to the full room. “Everyone who is here, thank you all so much for all you do and being so committed.”

The keystone moment of the Community Overdose Engagement (CODE) summit was when Raimondo handed out certificates to 25 cities and towns that had gone through with crafting their own municipal overdose response plans, which are extensive protocols outlined by municipalities designed to make clear how individual communities plan to combat overdoes within their populaces.

“At the Department of Health, we believe that public health must be maintained at the community and local level,” said Nicole Alexander-Scott, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health. “It’s grassroots, it’s community focused and community driven.”

Warwick began crafting its own municipal overdose response plan back last summer, and Captain Joseph Hopkins of the Warwick Police Department was in attendance, along with the department’s mental health liaison Maureen Gouveia, to accept the recognition from Raimondo.

According to Hopkins, Warwick began working on its own municipal overdose response plan to supplement the work that Gouveia was already doing, as she would ride along with on-duty officers to calls involving people with mental health and drug addiction issues to try to offer mental health services and treatment opportunities to those afflicted.

Hopkins said the plan moving forward is to continue building the Community Wellness Program within the department, where off-duty, out-of-uniform officers, along with Gouveia, will make checks on people known to be suffering from mental health issues or addiction, and try to offer them help or services if they are amenable to assistance.

He said that by September, which is National Recovery Month, the Community Wellness Program would be able to perform 10 consecutive days of checks in a row on every Warwick resident who suffered an overdose during the year. He said that anybody who is willing to accept help would be given the full attention and assistance that they need to get started towards recovery.

“I think we need to keep our collaboratives going,” Hopkins said of the benefits of summits like the one held on Tuesday. “It gets you more contact, you have monthly meetings, you’re sharing information and ideas and it is definitely helping for sure.”

However, Hopkins tempered any back patting about succeeding in the war against overdoses by reporting that overdoses have increased in Warwick by 30 percent over last year. Part of the issue, he said, is that a full 93 percent of people who were hospitalized in 2017 for an overdose refused to be entered into treatment or accept addiction services following their release.

Alexander-Scott also shared some data stemming from the state’s 48-hour overdose reporting system that showed there has been a significant up tick in opioid-related overdoses from May to June of 2018. Up to this point in the year, there had been an average of about 29 overdoses each week. During a three-week span from May to June, there were 42, 44 and 42 overdoses reported. This represents a 50 percent increase from that established average.

“The purpose of these advisories getting out is to be able to alert cities and towns at the local level of what is going and provide resources and suggestions on what can be done to correct it,” she said.

Further, data revealed that today’s drug overdose problem is a much different, more dangerous one than even just four years ago. Alexander-Scott showed how in 2014, most overdoses occurred due to either fentanyl or cocaine separately. However, in 2018, there was a more than 250 percent increase in the number of people who overdosed on a combination of both drugs.

This fact could be indicative of both the changing dynamic in regards to how people use drugs in the modern day, and also the problem associated with people taking other drugs that they don’t expect to contain fentanyl causing unintended overdoses.

“There are people that, when we tell them there’s fentanyl in the heroin they had, they’re totally shocked, and then there’s people looking for it,” Hopkins said, adding that drug dealers will “brand” their narcotics with logos and give them names to ensure people hear about how potent a particular batch is, in addition to spiking other drugs such as cocaine, marijuana and prescription pills with fentanyl.

While Raimondo said that the state was making progress in preventing overdoses and touted the state’s unique medical-assisted treatment program within its prison system – the only such state-supported system in the country, she reported – she said there is still room to improve.

“I think the overdose crisis is the single largest health issue that we are facing as a state…We’ve lost over a thousand Rhode Islanders to this crisis over the past handful of years,” she said. “And these are people of every walk of life, every zip code, every race, men and women, rich and poor, every community – enough is enough…We’re not going to stop until we beat this.”

Although the mantra is now often stated, to those in the field of combating overdoses and helping people to recovery, it is something that cannot be repeated enough.

“To address Rhode Island’s overdose crisis, we know we need to focus on prevention, we need to focus on rescue and we must help people gain access to treatment and the resources that they need to be successful in recovery,” said Rebecca Boss, director of the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals.

“The work that we have done as a team and as a community coming together is an indication that we’re stronger than ever,” she continued. “And we need to know that this affects every single life.”

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